B.C. joins N.S. in banning tanning beds for minors

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VANCOUVER -- B.C.'s Health Minister Michael de Jong announced Tuesday that the province will ban the use of commercial tanning beds by anyone under 18 to reduce the chances of developing skin cancer later in life.

With the announcement, B.C. joins Nova Scotia as the only provinces to ban minors from using tanning beds.

France has a similar ban, and the Australian state of New South Wales will ban tanning beds outright by 2014.

"I think it's clear that there is a strong desire to regulate the access that minors have to tanning beds," de Jong said last month. "I think that debate has evolved, really, to a choice between requiring specific parental consent or an outright ban."

The Joint Canadian Tanning Association is in favour of regulation, but not a ban on youth under 18.

Instead, regulations should require the permission of parents, said Steven Gilroy, executive director of the tanning association which is based in Kelowna, B.C.

Tanning-bed operators should also be required to have certification to run tanning equipment, and fair-skinned people who always burn and never tan should be banned from using the beds at all ages, said Gilroy.

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